Financial Sustainability: Mutual Trust for Communitywide Benefit

Year:

2017

Maintaining the financial capacity to provide quality services is a concern for all local governments. This is especially true in a time of immediate cost pressures, like pension and infrastructure, and resource constraints, like reduced financial support from state and federal governments and public aversion to higher taxes. Further, an aging population uses more in public services and pays less in taxes, which means local governments will be facing fiscal pressures for years to come. Failure to take on these challenges in a systematic and thoughtful way could endanger the financial sustainability of our communities and, with it, their health, safety, and welfare.